The foreign minister defended the nuclear deal clinched with major powers last month in Vienna as a "balanced" agreement, proving that Iran deserves fair treatment by the international community.
"The final text (of the accord) is balanced. We did not impose all our demands on the other side. In that case, it would not have been an agreement but a surrender document," Mohammad Javad Zarif said.
"The other side was not and will not be able to do that either," he was quoted by IRNA as saying at a panel discussion on the July 14 deal in Tehran on Sunday.
Zarif's deputies Abbas Araqchi and Majid Takht-Ravanchi and the head of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, Ali Akbar Salehi, also attended the event, organized by the Iranian Diplomacy news website.
The chief nuclear negotiator rejected the idea that sanctions were meant to put pressure on the economy, saying, "They were aimed at effecting a change of policy by pressuring the people to turn them against the government and thereby compelling the government to submit to demands by the powers that imposed the sanctions."
"That is why all the sanctions imposed on countries by the UN Security Council have resulted in a change of government or war."
The top diplomat said the high turn-out of 73% in the last presidential election in 2013 indicated sanctions against Iran had failed to achieve the desired results, which made the other side resort to negotiations.
He said the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action -- the official name of the accord -- has brought a change in the world's approach toward Iran's nuclear program.
"Since the end of negotiations, based on the JCPOA and the ensuing UN resolution, the way the world treats Iran over the nuclear issue has changed."
The JCPOA and the resolution issued to endorse it said with the deal successfully implemented, "The Iranian nuclear program will be treated in the same manner as that of any other non-nuclear-weapon state party to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty."
